


The Loss of a Love and Its Subsequent Denial

by lol-phan-af (lol_phan_af)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Blood, Break Up, M/M, Metaphors, Prose Poem, nobody dies this time!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 17:45:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12090153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lol_phan_af/pseuds/lol-phan-af
Summary: There was a special place in Thomas' heart, saved for almost loves and almost friends and could've beens that he gave up on after spending so long trying to make it what it wasn't. Special corners of his soul that he put people who were close but never close enough, in the journey but not the final destination. Alex took up a great deal of that space, so much he almost vacated it and became something else, but Thomas never let him. Thomas did not love him.Alex was too much. He wore his heart on his sleeve and had fire burning in his chest, charred embers and diamonds for teeth, chipped from how fast they ground against each other as he forced arguments out of his bonfire lungs, spitting flame and sparks off his gasoline slick tongue. His hands dug into the grip of a pen, the wood of his desk surface, the backs of Thomas' arms, with razor sharp nails and fingers made of steel, the palms of his hands felt soft in Thomas' but they were made of cobweb and marble.Thomas did not love him.





	The Loss of a Love and Its Subsequent Denial

Alex was simultaneously never enough, and far too much at once for Thomas. He barreled into Thomas' heart like a train running as fast as it could, but Thomas did not love him, so when Alex looked him the eyes and told him that he  _ did _ , Thomas could not answer.    
  
There was a special place in Thomas' heart, saved for almost loves and almost friends and could've beens that he gave up on after spending so long trying to make it what it wasn't. Special corners of his soul that he put people who were close but never close enough, in the journey but not the final destination. Alex took up a great deal of that space, so much he almost vacated it and became something else, went somewhere else in Thomas' shipwrecked body, but Thomas never let him. Thomas did not love him.    
  
Alex was too much. He wore his heart on his sleeve and had fire burning in his chest, charred embers and diamonds for teeth, chipped from how fast they ground against each other as he forced arguments out of his bonfire lungs, spitting flame and sparks off his gasoline slick tongue. His hands dug into the grip of a pen, the wood of his desk surface, the backs of Thomas' arms, with razor sharp nails and fingers made of steel boning, the palms of his hands felt soft in Thomas' but they were made of cobweb and marble, too solid yet not solid enough to lean on.   
  
Thomas did not love him. He could not love anyone who was more mechanic than they were man, who went through life like he was playing a chess game and there was no other option except to let Alex win. He conquered world after world in Thomas' brain, took everything he could, or maybe Thomas offered it.   
  
Maybe, instead of reaching into the recesses of his mind and grabbing, Thomas simply handed it over like a box of junk at a yard sale. The more he thought about it, the more the possibility came to mind, the more likely it seemed. With every kiss and touch and smile offered to him he gave something of himself back, and now Alex was gone and moved on and Thomas tried to forget him in the way his lips ghosted over the skin of other people who were never quite right, never quite him, in the bottom of a glass bottle, or his shower floor, in the high of the rush of adrenaline, or the melancholic feeling of stalking Alexander's instagram and seeing as he took the minds of new people.    
  
Thomas never knew where he was anymore, somewhere floating, in vodka, between the end of the world and the beginning of a new one. He had other things to do besides mourn a man he did not love and who was not dead, but lying on his bathroom floor felt  _ right _ . Missing a man he did not love and who was not gone was a waste of his time, but climbing into his bathtub fully clothed, turning on the water and letting it fill until it engulfed his every sense, flooded his mind and his lungs and invaded his body and left him a shipwrecked man in an ocean too small for him to fit.    
  
Alex was too much because his body, like his lungs, was a bonfire, but he did not stay in his confines. He took to the grass, snaked his way through a forest of other people and burned Thomas alive and Thomas knew that, he  _ watched it _ , and still, when he began to burn, he said nothing. A word did not pass through his numbing lips. Alex was a fire, he was smoke filling Thomas' very being, he was the whisper of a voice barely there when the breath Thomas had stolen from him still hadn't come back yet. Thomas missed him, but this was not the loss of a love. Thomas never loved him.    
  
Alex covered every inch of ground in Thomas' life, wrapped his heart and his bones down to the marrow at their core in ribbon and tied a tag to it with his name on it. Thomas let him, would've stared him in the eyes as Alex pressed a gun to his chest, and would not have blinked as he pulled the trigger. With any luck, he would shoot through his heart, and then Thomas could say that Alex leaving wasn't the reason for the missing pieces.   
  
Maybe the reason that Thomas wouldn't admit that he loved Alex,  _ not that he did _ , was because he existed in many instances of omnipresence, but he was an absent lover all the same.    
  
Alex burned when he was gone, when the world turned cold and he dropped off the map because he found better people to spend his time with, he stayed in Thomas' mind like a weight on his chest he couldn't lift off.    
  
He screamed at the top of his lungs that Thomas was beautiful like a summer sunset, like raindrops on bare skin and the first snow of winter that covers the ground entirely. Fields upon fields of wildflowers and the face of the first love of your life. He was beautiful like a crystal chandelier, a galaxy of stars, a choir of angels exalting their praise at midnight mass, Christmas morning with the first family you ever had.   
  
His word was as good as counterfeit dollar bills, and Thomas knew that if he meant what he said, if he  _ meant  _ that Thomas was as beautiful as he claimed he was, he would've written it down. Alex kept his writing for John most days, left Thomas wondering when he would see his own name appear somewhere in Alexander's handwriting.    
  
He never did.    
  
Thomas never loved Alex, but Alex might have loved Thomas. The way his nails, like blades, scraped down his back in the easy Saturday mornings, when they didn't talk, and then pulled Thomas by the waistband back to his room, it might've been a feeling he missed after he left. The nights when they walked through the city with nowhere else to be, and their laughter rang loud and then was subsequently drowned out by the roar of city life, might've left his heart beating in a way he yearned for once he fell into other patterns with other people and  _ God,  _ why can't Thomas stop thinking about him?    
  
Thomas never forgot the feeling of Alex around, still saw his ghost hovering behind him in the window of his kitchen, in the bathroom mirror watching as he washed his face before he went to bed. Thomas saw Alex covered in blankets and sheets, curled up in their bed, saw him singing in the shower, reading on the comfy red couch Thomas had in his living room. He wanted to replace it, like Alex did with him, and get rid of the burn marks in the shape of his shadow.   
  
The day Alex left, Thomas did not wish him farewell. He did not look in his eyes and say he understood, that sometimes flames go out and, honey, that's okay. The day Alex left all Thomas saw was  _ hellfire _ , and pain, and the days when he testified against his friends, his family, the eyes of God and said this boy,  _ this one is for real this time _ . Every time Alexander told him he loved him and then did not show it, every part of Thomas' memory that Alex had claimed he wanted to give it  _ back  _ to him, wanted to take that bonfire boy and  _ extinguish him _ , to rip him to pieces until he was nothing but ash and rubble.    
  
The day Alex left, Thomas punched his bathroom mirror over and over until his knuckles split open and he forgot Alexander ever fucking lived in this house with him. He called James, hung up on James after he asked if Thomas was okay.  _ You're crying _ , he whispered, and Thomas screamed and ended it, dropped his phone in the empty bathtub and stormed out of the bathroom to Alexander standing in the living room still waiting for a real response to his surrender. There was blood on the floor that night, dripping from his knuckles like the tears from his eyes, and now Alexander was gone but there is still  _ blood on the floor _ , and sometimes, Thomas cried when he looked at it.     
  
John Laurens had eyes so green, it looked like someone made them from cut jade and broken pieces of beer bottles. He had freckles dotted across his skin so close to one another you could make constellations on his forehead and his shoulders and anywhere you could see his skin. He had lips the color of strawberries and teeth like jagged crystals overlapping in his mouth, and when he smiled it looked like a shark Thomas was supposed to run from. He had a temper, and the fire he spit was nowhere close to what Alexander had, but Alex looked at him and saw something he didn't in Thomas, and that's all he cared about.    
  
"I love him," Alex muttered, ashamed, and he should've been. He didn't meet Thomas' eyes, trained his ink black pupils set in irises as dark as charred wood on the split open skin across Thomas' hand.    
  
"You've said."  He wrung out his hand like a dishrag, tried to act like it didn't cause enough pain to bring him to his knees.    
  
"I'm sorry I had to tell you like this, all of a sudden."    
  
"You're not sorry at all."   
  
Thomas, in that moment, was Pompeii, and the ashes fell on him one at a time until Alex looked him in the eyes, magma of Vesuvius coursing through him. It poured out like lava slow and not yet explosive, and the conqueror of Thomas' kingdom, who held every card Thomas ever played with him, a treasure chest of words spent on late nights when Thomas didn't know better, when the possibility of this happening was nowhere to be found. Alex shifted on his feet.    
  
"No, I guess I'm not."    
  
Thomas wanted to kill him. He wanted to grab Alex by the throat that he spoke so highly of and crush him in his hands, wanted to watch as every star in his heart and every flame in his soul burnt out as Thomas' blood dripped and pooled in his collarbones, wanted to leave his body on John Laurens' front doorstep. A warning, a caution, a prevention of a tragedy waiting to happen.    
  
He would never admit it, not to himself, or Alex. Not to his mother, who, despite claiming that she will still love him anyway, never looked at him the same. He will never admit to James, his sisters, brothers, siblings, to the grave of his father or to God himself, but he  _ loved  _ Alexander.    
  
Thomas loved Alexander like the stories of people who fall in love with their muggers. He loved him like someone loves a rollercoaster, knowing there's a small chance you'll die but that will never happen to you, that happens to other people. Loved him like a summer thunderstorm that sent a tree crashing into your living room and smiling, saying it was time for a house renovation anyway, taking the bad and making it good and not even acknowledging that oh, yeah,  _ there's a tree in your god damned living room,  _ and your house, no matter how pretty you make it, will never stand quite the same.   
  
He clawed, nails now like knives, and dragged his soaking wet body to the floor of his own bedroom. He shed his clothes off until he was nothing but skin and bone and a city nobody would find for centuries, buried under everything Alex left behind. He burrowed under his comforter and could not fall asleep, skin too cold and damp and craving a heat that no longer gave itself to him.    
  
Heat and bonfires were best viewed by pretty boys with green eyes, the kind that look like they have flecks of gold in them as they stare and watch it burn. The world itself could be burning in front of pretty boys with green eyes, and the only thing you would write poetry about, is how beautiful he looked when he smiled at it.    
  
There was a special place in Thomas' heart, saved for almost loves and almost friends and could've beens that he gave up on because they tried too hard and not enough, and the more Thomas thought about it, the more he realized, Alex didn't fit there. Alex didn't fit anywhere anymore. The heart Thomas thought he organized so well, wasn't there to push Alex in a box of could have been and never was, it was nothing but ash and rubble.   
  
Eventually, fatigue washed over him like a fire hose, hard enough that he'd never wake up, and he fell asleep to the sound of Alex's voice playing like a distant memory in his head. It didn't hurt so much when he was only half conscious, the pain and emotions muffled under his comforter and cradled by the pillow under his head.    
  
The next morning, Thomas woke up and grabbed his phone from the bathroom vanity where he left it. A text from Alex saying he left a few of his things at Thomas' apartment, and that he'd be over later to pick them up.    
  
That afternoon, Thomas ordered a new couch.   


**Author's Note:**

> when will i write happy things again?? who knows!!


End file.
